Florida Southern to Begin Work on Site for Business College

By MARY TOOTHMANTHE LEDGER

Thursday

Feb 14, 2013 at 4:06 AM

Florida Southern College is already bursting with pride for being known as the most beautiful campus in the nation — and administrators say a new building that will house its business college is going to make the school even prettier. Florida Southern College breaks ground today on the new Bill and Mary Ann Becker Business Building at Lake Hollingsworth Drive and Hollingsworth Road.

LAKELAND | Florida Southern College is already bursting with pride for being known as the most beautiful campus in the nation — and administrators say a new building that will house its business college is going to make the school even prettier.

Florida Southern College breaks ground today on the new Bill and Mary Ann Becker Business Building at Lake Hollingsworth Drive and Hollingsworth Road.

The building was designed by the dean of the Yale School of Architecture, Robert A.M. Stern. He also designed the Nicholas and Wesley Barnett Resident Halls and the Dr. Marcene H. and Robert E. Christoverson Humanities Building at the college.

Bill Becker and his wife, Mary Ann, donated a $5 million naming gift to FSC for the building. The owner of Peace River Citrus Products, Bill Becker is a 1965 alumnus of the college and former chairman of the Florida Citrus Commission.

The Becker Building will house the Barney Barnett School of Business and Free Enterprise. The three-story, 40,000-square-foot building is projected to cost more than $20 million and should be completed by the summer of 2015. Business students currently use the Carlisle Rogers Building.

"We are very pleased that the building is actually coming to fruition," Becker said in an email Wednesday. "It will be exciting to see it come out of the ground and become a reality.

"What interested me in this particular project was the decision to dedicate an entire building to the support of the Florida Southern business degree. In our industry, as with all others, an education in business principals and ethics is the cornerstone of success. Since I had decided that we should give something back to Florida Southern, this business building seemed to be the perfect vehicle for that objective."

College President Anne Kerr said it's a top-notch facility that will serve business students well. "This dynamic, state-of-the-art facility will be a place where generations of students prepare for important careers throughout the world," she said.

The building will feature a simulated trading floor — a laboratory where students can learn firsthand about investment analysis and trading strategies. It also will feature a computer lab, a career and placement center, group meeting rooms, faculty offices and a cafe.

Stern's contemporary designs for the college complement the Frank Lloyd Wright collection at Florida Southern, which boasts the world's largest single-site collection of Wright's designs.

Kathleen Munson, president of the Lakeland Area Chamber of Commerce, said Lakeland is fortunate to be graced with the college, which counts in its honors cache that of the "Most Beautiful Campus in the Nation," courtesy of the Princeton Review.

"This is going to raise the bar to an even higher level," Munson said of the Becker Building. "Florida Southern is really one of the greatest assets we have in this community. This is so exciting, to add to the incredible campus footprint that we have here already."

A groundbreaking ceremony, complete with shovels and dignitaries, will be held at the site at 11:30 a.m.

[ Mary Toothman can be reached at mary.toothman@theledger.com or 863-802-7512. Her Twitter feed is @MaryToothman.]

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